Sunday, March 18, 2012

The
scene is that Jesus is just about to be arrested and he is offering his
last words. It is a prayer. After he says this prayer, he marches
his disciples across the Kidron valley to a garden where he knows all
what will happen. As John writes the story, Jesus is in control even of his own arrest. There is no agony in this prayer.

In the synoptic gospels, Jesus pleads that God take away the cup. Some manuscripts in Luke read that Jesus’ agony was so intense that he sweated blood. This is from Mark:

They
went to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit
here while I pray.’ He took with him Peter and James and John, and began
to be distressed and agitated. And he said to them, ‘I am deeply
grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake.’ And going a little
farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were
possible, the hour might pass from him. He said, ‘Abba, Father, for you
all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want,
but what you want.’

This is the anguish of the poem, Hamlet, by Boris Paternak that I included in the liturgy:

But the order of acts has been arrangedAnd the end cannot be forestalled.I’m alone. All else, sunk to the Pharisee.To live one’s life is no stroll in the park.

Certainly not.

The rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, does a great job with this scene. Jesus fights with God and finally gives in to God’s overwhelming will.

Not my will, but thine be done.

How
do you say those words on stage? With casual indifference? C’est la
vie? No. With resignation? Maybe. Defeat? Now you are getting
closer. Defiance? “Fine then, kill me, see what I care!”

Whatever
nuance you bring to it, it is agony and doubt. It is a clash of wills,
“not mine but thine”. It makes for great drama.

But none of that with John’s Jesus. John’s
Jesus is cool, confident, and in control. "I and the Father are
one." The tone of his speech is not the tone of a person who knows he
is likely to be tortured and executed. It is the tone of someone going
to receive a Nobel Prize.

“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son my glorify you…”

When
he is on trial he has philosophical debates with Pilate over truth and
power. On the cross, while dying he arranges his familial affairs.
"Take care of my mother", he says to the beloved disciple. He says
he is thirsty, not because he is really thirsty, but because he fulfills
scripture, then after he has finished his script, he says, “It is
finished.” He bows his head politely, and gives up his spirit.

None of the torment of Mark’s Jesus: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!”

That would be heresy for John’s Jesus. John’s Jesus is a complete opposite of Mark’s Jesus.

“The Jesus of Mark dies in human agony. The Jesus of John dies in divine radiance.” P. 233

What does all this mean?

A couple of things.

First,
that when we read the gospels, the parables about Jesus, to use
Crossan’s designation, we are reading conflicting and divergent views of
Jesus. The gospel writers are not of one mind.

Second,
these gospels are not biographies of Jesus. They are creative fictions
or parables in which Jesus is a character in the story and he functions
in different ways in each gospel. There are a small minority of
scholars who think that the gospels are total fictions and that Jesus is
a complete fiction. Most scholars would say there is an historical
person in Jesus and we can know some things about him and speculate
about other things. Even then, as a whole, the documents we have about
him, namely the gospels, are creative parables that serve the interests
of the writers.

Third,
the gospels have both continuity and discontinuity with the historical
person of Jesus. I personally find Dominic Crossan’s Jesus most
compelling. This Jesus by telling parables challenged people to
participate in God’s advent of distributive justice.

This
is the kingdom of God that comes as a mustard seed becomes a weed.
As leaven contaminates bread, so does peace through justice contaminate
and thwart the dehumanizing violence of empire. Empire hates
disorder. Therefore, be disorderly.

Be a weed. Be leaven.

Empire wants a place for everyone and everyone in her place.

Get out of place.

That is the message of Jesus.

By
the time we get to the fourth century and the Nicene Creed, we have
nearly total discontinuity between the historical Jesus and the Jesus as
icon of empire. In the Nicene Creed, Jesus blesses the very system
that oppresses. He becomes an otherworldly fantasy. The focus is
not on what Jesus did or said, and certainly not about distributive
justice, but about him as a gear in the church’s salvation machine.
Worship Jesus. Recite the creed. Obey the emperor. You’ll escape hell
and get to heaven.

The
gospels have begun that journey toward the fourth century, but they
have a long way to go and they still retain that message of Jesus, even
as it begins to shift and take a different shape. Even in the earliest
gospel, Mark, Jesus becomes the good news rather than someone who tells the good news.

However, there is still continuity between the gospels and the historical Jesus, even in John’s gospel. This continuity comes across in John’s use of the word cosmos, which is translated world. A better English rendering might be system as in domination system.

The
domination system is that network of dehumanizing forces that include
economic exploitation, racism, sexism, heterosexism, militarism, all
enforced by legalized violence and legitimated by religious
institutions.

“It is the way the world works,” we say.

John’s Jesus says of his disciples:

“They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.” 17:16

The
“world” does not mean physical reality, Earth, life, the world we know,
as opposed to some spiritual or supernatural existence. That
understanding comes later as Jesus becomes co-opted by empire and the
institutional church. In the first century, including John’s gospel, the universe is of one piece and what happens here is what is real.

The “world” as John
uses the term is the way of domination and injustice. It is an
ideology en-fleshed in the various empires and their institutions. Its
values include but are not limited to:

Peace
by force. Peace by force is reinforced by the myth of redemptive
violence. That is the lie that violence saves. If Jesus were told
that he needs to thank a soldier for his freedom, Jesus would say, “No
thanks. That is the freedom of this world or system. That is not true
freedom.” Who should he thank by the way, the soldier who crucified
him?

Another
value of this world is that the order of the system is more important
than those who suffer from the system. We are told that we must do
everything to uphold Wall Street because the banks are too big to fail.
We must keep our economic system growing even if it means destroying
our home and causing suffering to the most in need. Making a primary
commitment to housing, food, and healthcare for everyone would hurt the
system. The system is more important than people.

You
hear this kind of argument in the church. Well, if we allow those
people in the church, what will people think? They might not give
money to the church. Really? If the survival of your institution
depends on pandering to discrimination, then your institution is
probably not worth saving. Your church has become “the world.”

When Jesus says in John:

“They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world…” 17:16

…that
isn’t religious talk. That isn’t spiritual talk in the sense that we
normally think of religion and spirituality. It is real stuff. He is
saying in effect in modern idiom,

“I
do not share the values of this system of violence, exclusion, and
inequality. The values I share are non-violence, inclusion, and
distributive justice.”

That is the continuity between the historical Jesus and John. John’s
conflict with his sibling Judaism that he puts on the lips of Jesus is
not continuous with the historical Jesus. Obviously, Jesus was a Jew.
Listen to this, when Jesus says to Pilate:

“My
kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my
followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the
Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

Certainly
the reference to “the Jews” is discontinuous with the historical Jesus.
But what does Jesus mean when he says my kingdom is not from this
world? He doesn’t mean that his kingdom is in heaven above or in
heaven after or as an internal spiritual escape. His kingdom is
right here and now. And it is seen in the way we treat one another.

That way is not returning violence with violence.

That way is valuing people over the system.

That way is hospitality and welcome to everyone.

This is what I think is being said to Pilate:

“If
my values and the values of my followers were the same as yours,
Pilate, they would be fighting for me with the weapons of violence.
But their values and mine are not those values. Let it be clear.
That is why you are executing me. The world (your system) cannot handle
my values.”

Before Jesus is arrested, John
has Jesus offer this prayer. It isn’t really a prayer, though. It
certainly is not a prayer born of anguish as is the prayer in Mark’s gospel.

In John it is more of a sermon, a statement.

In this sermon he says something that I take home:

“The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me….”

It is that verse that got me thinking of the children’s book by Maurice Sendak, In the Night Kitchen. A little boy, Mickey, has a fantastic night journey, kind of surreal, like the Gospel of John,
really. Under Mickey’s house is a bakery. The bakers are making
breakfast cakes. Mickey almost gets baked in the oven. He gets out.
The book is scary and funny at the same time. There is a playfulness
about it as it addresses real things that children experience. As the
bakers in Mickey’s dream are baking the cakes, Mickey falls into the
milk and realizes,

“I am in the milk and the milk’s in me! God bless milk and God bless me!”

There is a playfulness and a confidence in the Gospel of John
as well. Amidst all of this stuff that I just said about the world,
the violence and the injustice that was true in the time of Jesus as it
is now, it is also overcome as one participates in life in a different
way. Jesus in John is confident as the day is long. He is arrested
by 600 troops and they bow down before him. He carries his own cross.
He decides when to breathe his last. He announces,

“I and the Father are one. I am in you and I am in them.” “I’m in the milk and the milk’s in me.”

What
I take from this, is that this way of being, this way of following a
vision in opposition to the powers of violence and injustice in favor of
non-violence and justice is agonizing and frustrating. And it appears
that the good loses more than it wins. Says Jesus in Mark:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”

But the sheer, brazen, fantastic confidence of John
needs to be heard, too. This is the message that the victory has
been won. The way of justice, joy, love, and peace has already
defeated the world. The world doesn’t know it, yet. But it will. In
the meantime, we live those values, confident that we are not alone.
Confident also that these values were established before creation itself
when the Word was with God and the Word was God.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

This section in John’s gospel is called The Farewell Discourse. In John, Jesus takes a long time to say goodbye. Over the course of the Winter we have been working our way through John. John was written about 60-70 years after the death of Jesus, sometime in the 90s. That is a best guess. John appears to be not an historical account of the life of Jesus, but a theological proclamation about Jesus.

Jesus in John is more of a literary character than an historical person. Jesus is used by John to deal with problems in John’s time.

Jesus begins chapter 16 by saying,

“They
are going to throw you out of their congregations. But the time is
coming when those who kill you will think they are offering devotion to
God. They are going to do these things because they never knew the
Father or me. Yet I have told you all this so, when the time comes,
you’ll recall that I told you about them.”

This is happening in John’s time. John writes his gospel by having Jesus predict the future which is John’s present. This is not uncommon. The book of Daniel
is presented as a prophecy of the future. Yet scholars now realize
that it was written in the time of the events it “predicts”.

Who is throwing them out of the congregations and according to John even killing them? It appears to be a sibling community. The Gospel of John
is one side of a sibling rivalry between the community that eventually
became the church and the community that eventually became modern
Judaism. This is the most difficult aspect to read because we know of
the legacy of antisemitism that has resulted. We have no idea how
much to trust John. We are reading one side of the story.

John’s
gospel is addressed to a community that sees itself under siege.
Under siege from its sibling and under siege from what it calls the
“world”. The gospel is written to comfort and encourage this
community to hang in there and to discover peace in Jesus. Jesus is
presented in John as the incarnation of the Word, the divine dabar
that was with God from the beginning. Jesus knows everything. Nothing
happens to him that he is not aware of happening. He knows where he is
going. He knows where he is been. He knows what people are thinking.
He and the Father are one. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
He is I Am. He is IT. He is the Man.

He
has conquered the “world”. Hang with him and with the community that
follows him and you will conquer the world too. One way to encourage a
community is to remind the community of its founding story and to tell
the community that the troubles it is experiencing have been anticipated
by the founders themselves and will be overcome.

The
challenge for the community is that there is no more Jesus. He isn’t
around. They are alone. They are scattered. They are grieving. The
way John handles this is that he has Jesus tell them that they are not
alone, but they have the advocate. After Jesus is resurrected and he
is alone with the disciples he breathes on them and they receive the
spirit, the advocate.

From John’s
perspective, they are not alone. They have Spirit with them. While
the community might think it would have been easier or better to be with
Jesus, Jesus tells them,

“…you’ll
be better off if I leave. You see, if I don’t leave, the advocate
can’t come to you. But if I go, I’ll send the advocate to you.”

When read in community, the Gospel of John
is a constant reminder that the advocate is with them, teaches them
truth, gives them encouragement, and will enable them to conquer the
world as Jesus conquered the world. It is not really a surprise that John ends up becoming the centerpiece in many respects of the Christian faith.

When
you go through a struggle, it is comforting and encouraging to speak to
someone who has been there and who was able to make it through and who
can offer authentic and honest encouragement and hope from the inside.

The story is that the founder, Jesus, even though executed by the powers, by the world, from John’s
perspective conquered the world. Even though the world persecutes and
kills you, you still conquer. That is martyrdom talk. That is the
gospel from a siege mentality. The New Testament as a whole comes from
various communities that see themselves under siege.

When
we see today contemporary American Christians who by the standards of
the world are at the top pinnacle of wealth and power, yet see
themselves as under attack or under siege, you can see from whence that
attitude comes. It comes from the Bible. John’s gospel is about how
to survive being a victim.

One
of the challenges for contemporary people and for contemporary faith is
to figure out how to read ourselves into these stories. When we listen
to sermons or read the scriptures we read ourselves into the stories.
We look for a place to hang our experience. When the literature is
primarily victim literature, we can read our own present experience that
way, even when we are not victims. That is not a healthy thing to do.
It is not healthy for us or for others.

I
could preach a sermon on this text that paints greedy coal companies as
the “world”. The “world” is intent on destroying our mountains for its
own profit. Jesus, the Victim Divine, is on our side and conquers
the “world”. That would be true. But it wouldn’t be the whole truth.
It is more complex and much more messy than that.

Truth
be told, we are the “world” as much as victims of the “world”. I
drive cars and I turn on the lights and I eat from the top of the food
chain. I am one of the average North Americans who if the world
consumed like me, we would need four planets of resources. I had my
coffee this morning from McDonald’s and I don’t think it was fair trade.
Somebody and probably a lot of somebodies is not getting theirs as I
get mine.

That
doesn’t mean I am going to stop talking about saving our mountains.
By no means. But there is no way I can ever think of myself as
righteous about this. I am not only a victim of the world. I am not
merely hated by the world. I am also the world.

John has Jesus say to the disciples:

“In the world you are going to face persecution.”

That
was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. As the history of the church
has shown, and certainly in our own time, the disciples and followers
of Jesus have persecuted others at least as much as they have been
persecuted. We need to take care as we read and appropriate these
texts that we are honest about them and ourselves.

In
fact, I am wondering if we ought to use this victim literature
sparingly. It appears that everyone claims to be a victim. Christians
are victims. Muslims are victims. Jews are victims. Republicans
are victims. Democrats are victims. We all claim persecution.
Rarely do we see ourselves as persecutors.

Victim
language tends to divide as it hides our own dark side. We are a
mixed bunch with mixed motives. Much of the time what others
experience as persecution was not intended as such by those accused of
persecution. I am not saying that there is no such thing as
persecution and that there are not victims of persecution. I am
suggesting that this language be used sparingly, accurately,
appropriately, and with the recognition that few of us have clean hands.

The Gospel of John
was written to and for a community that saw itself as under siege. It
is apocalyptic literature. That means there are two kinds of people in
this world, light and dark, above and below, us and them, good and
evil. You are good. You will conquer the evil. That is dangerous
language. It is great for rousing up a crowd and for starting a holy
war but it is not so good for the messy, complicated, humbling, and
carefully engaging, long-term work of peacemaking and justice-making.

That is the kind of work we need on Earth today.

There
are many problems and many conflicting ideas and agendas for solving
them. These ideas and agendas are motivated often by fear and
self-interest to be sure. But there is wisdom and love out there and
within us as well.

Even as John’s gospel is written to a community under siege, it yet has wisdom and truth. I turn to John’s
understanding of the advocate. This is the spirit who is with the
community in the place of Jesus. The advocate is the spirit of truth.
Jesus tells them that it is better for them if he goes so that the
spirit of truth can come.

Why would that be better? Why is the spirit better than the real guy?

I
think it is the difference between having an external authority who
gives you all the answers and having an internal moral compass. It is
the difference between relying on your parents for deciding where to go
and what to do and growing up and making your own decisions. It is
the difference between relying on an authority figure such as a teacher
or preacher for the answers and for seeking answers yourself.

The famous Zen koan says,

“If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

The
point is that if you see the Buddha you have externalized enlightenment
whereas true enlightenment is within. Killing the Buddha is a
metaphorical way of realizing that you are the Buddha.

In
a similar but not exact way, the spirit or the advocate is the Christ
within. Not just within in a personal sense, but among in an
interpersonal sense. The wisdom, the spirit of truth, is among and
within all of us. This spirit of truth is within all of humanity, in
fact, within all of Earth’s life. That is the recognition that we
are moving toward.

My
critique, if I can be so bold as to critique holy scripture, is that
the spirit, the advocate, is within those we regard as persecutors as
well, or the “world”.

We are not simply good or evil, light or dark, above or below. We are a massive mess of mixed motives.

Our
salvation is in recognizing that truth and bringing everyone, including
those who have been without voice to the table. This spirit of truth
is at work all over in many places. As Buddhist Joanna Macy assures
us, the truth is in all beings.

“A
revolution is underway because people are realizing that our needs can
be met without destroying our world. We have the technical knowledge,
the communication tools, and material resources to grow enough food,
ensure clean air and water, and meet rational energy needs. Future
generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the
epochal transition we are making to a life-sustaining society. And they
may well call this the time of the Great Turning. It is happening now.”

We are part of an exciting time.

As
tempting as it might be to see ourselves as under siege, or see
ourselves as being persecuted by the forces of darkness, it is likely
more wise, to recognize that the spirit of truth is larger than us and
is found in unexpected places and is at work in our enemies as much as
in our friends.

There
is all this business of Jesus delaying so he can make a big show. Of
course, there are Martha’s famous words when Jesus commands that the
stone be rolled away after Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days.

The King James puts its best.

“Lord! By this time, he stinketh.”

Jesus shouting at the top of his lungs:

“Lazarus, come out!”

The corpse of Lazarus rumbles and bumbles, and out he staggers, wrapped like a mummy.

Jesus says: “Unbind him and let him go!”

John’s
gospel tells the stories in a big way. Jesus just doesn’t cure a
person from blindness, but a person born blind. He doesn’t just raise a
child from death who has recently died, but he raises a guy who has
been entombed for four days. He doesn’t just make a little bit of
wine from water, but enough for several parties and better wine than the
host served first. When Jesus goes to his execution, unlike the
synoptic gospels, who have someone carry the cross for him, in John,
Jesus carries his own cross. Jesus isn’t the adopted son of God at
his baptism, or even his birth as in the other gospels. In John, Jesus is the pre-existent Word in the beginning with God. No one messes with John’s Jesus unless he allows them to do so. He is kind of like Chuck Norris.
Jesus doesn’t even need to pray. He just prays for the benefit of
others who hear. Abraham? Ha! Before Abraham, I AM. That is John’s Jesus.

John’s
story leaves many unanswered questions. Such as, what happened to
Lazarus? I thought it might have been interesting to ask Lazarus what
it was like to be dead. Did his soul go somewhere then come back? Did
he see the light? Did he have a spirit guide? Did he go to Hades or
to Heaven? Did he hover over his body? Or was he simply without
consciousness then have it back again? Was he the same guy when he came
back? Were his memories intact? Was he happy coming back? Did he
stinketh?

None of that is interesting to John. We never hear of or from stinky Lazarus again.

Those
kinds of questions always get you in trouble in Sunday School. Just
stick to the script. I used to ask a lot of troubling questions. I
learned fairly early that my preachers and teachers were pretty grave
about the Bible. It wasn’t a book to enjoy, really, it was a book to
believe.

I preach on the Bible
about as much as any other preacher. I don’t preach on it as if it
were a book to believe. I don’t find most of it particularly
believable, at least in the way that we were supposed to believe it.
For instance, that this story is about something that happened. I look
at it and I see some kind of literary imagination at work, or perhaps
on oral story put in writing. The author may be having fun with us.

I don’t find this story credible, but I do find it enjoyable. I don’t think that is a bad way to read the gospels or the Bible
for that matter. I think we should at least have as much fun as the
authors had. I think we tend to regard these stories far too gravely
and more gravely than the authors intended us to regard them.

To
put it bluntly, our serious, belief-oriented readings stinketh. We
need to hear the command to come out and to be unbound. My
irreverence is not intended to be a dismissal of these stories. It is
intended to prod (myself mostly) out of a too serious, belief-oriented,
reading. If this story seems funny and weird, then go with it.
There may be something to that.

When I suggest that Jesus in the Gospel of John is a more of a fictional character than an historical figure, and that John is using his creative imagination in creating this story, it isn’t that I am saying throw out the gospel.

When
I learn that these Appalachian mountains are 500 million years old and
formed by natural processes such as continental crashes as opposed to
being created 6,000 years ago by God, that doesn’t make them less
sacred. I find that natural explanation far more interesting,
actually.

When
I admire a painting or hear a beautiful song, it doesn’t make either
less admirable or less beautiful because human beings were the painters
and the singers as opposed to angels.

I
can be inspired and intrigued by Hamlet’s soliloquy even though I know
that Hamlet was a creation of Shakespeare. It is easier of course with
Hamlet as opposed to Jesus because there was no church that claimed
Hamlet was the second person of the Trinity. Hamlet is thus unbound
from the strictures of church dogma.

This is one of the changes that has been underway for some time. The Bible
is beginning to be seen as a human product and as a classic of Western
literature. It no longer belongs to the church. It can be read,
interpreted, enjoyed, and criticized as a literary product. When it is
unbound from church restrictions, it can be an inspiration to our
creativity.

This is true for other so-called holy books, such as the Qur’an or the Bhagavad Gita.
Those who want to have control of those books and their
interpretation may not like this freedom, but it doesn’t matter. Those
books do not belong to them. They belong to all of us. The field is
wide open. The stone to the tomb has been rolled away.

“Come out!”

This freedom allows us to read again these texts with a new perspective.

That
freedom has to do with reading, enjoying, and savoring these stories
and the life questions they raise with curiosity, unbounded curiosity,
as opposed to indoctrination. We can have a conversation with the
author. We can resist the author. We can embrace the author.

In this story, Jesus says to Martha,

“Your brother will be raised.”

Martha responds,

“I know he’ll be raised—in the resurrection on the last day.”

Jesus said to her,

“I
am the resurrection and the life; those who believe in me, even if they
die, will live, but everyone who is alive and believes in me will never
die. Do you believe this?”

Throughout the Gospel of John,
the reader is often at a loss of how literal to take the character of
Jesus when he makes these pronouncements. This story is odd in the
fact that Martha seems to have the doctrine correct. That is even
traditional Christian doctrine, resurrection on the last day. Yet
apparently, that isn’t right.

For John
has Jesus say that anyone “who is alive and believes will never die.”
That is odd. He can’t literally mean that. Or does he? Is “die” a
metaphor for something? Does he just mean those who believe will go to
heaven when they die? What would the difference between that and what
she originally said? Does “believe” and thus “never die” mean quality
of life?

What
does that have to do with Lazarus? The zombie thing? The corpse that
stinketh coming back to life is just kind of creepy. Are we still to
assume that Lazarus is still alive somewhere? Or did he die again or
just go to heaven?

I am sure there are preachers who will give you the answers.

I think answers are boring. They turn us into believers (or non-believers) rather than curious seekers.

What happens after death?

I don’t know. Do you know?

I
personally have not met anyone or read anyone ever who has convinced me
that they actually know anything about life after death. I have met
people who believe and who seem certain and are concerned that I believe
correctly (or at least that I lead the sheep correctly). I simply
don’t find them convincing.

I
especially don’t find people convincing who claim (and all religions
and spiritualties seem to do this) that there are certain practices or
beliefs you have to do in this life to get the best action on the other
side. I am not convinced. I am not convinced they know what is on
the other side and I am skeptical that I have to jump through beliefs or
practices to get there.

Someone posted on Facebook a phrase that made me snicker. It said,

“I am going to hell in every religion.”

That is probably true for me.

In the worry over life after death, I will let that mystery be.

However, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t fun to think or talk about.

I am having fun now with the idea of the multi-verse,
the possibility of an infinite number of universes. That sounds fun.
Maybe I will experience consciousness in one of them. Who knows?

Mostly I am just amazed when I allow myself to be aware that I am actually here.

I
think when Jesus has that conversation with Martha that Martha is
anxious. She has her beliefs "right", but they aren’t that comforting.
Jesus says,

“…everyone who is alive and believes (or trusts which is a better word) in me will never die…”

He is saying in effect,

“Don’t worry about it so much.”

John’s
Jesus is the authoritative Word from the beginning. He knows
everything. He can do anything. He is the Chuck Norris Jesus. You
know those Chuck Norris jokes. Like this one:

“The universe isn’t expanding. It is just running away from Chuck Norris.”

That
Jesus, is telling Martha, I am the guy with the answers. Trust me.
Don’t trust your religious doctrine. Trust that whatever happens,
alive or dead, it is OK.

This is what I take away.

There
is a great deal of anxiety about our lives. Certainly. The
contingencies of life are challenging and there is suffering to be sure.
One of the goals of religious institutions ought to be to help people
negotiate and come to terms with the contingencies of life. They do
that.

Sometimes, however, they can add needless suffering. I see people

anxious that they are good enough,

worried that they will believe the wrong things,

or convinced that they believe the right things,

concerned that God will reject them or has rejected them.

Much
of that comes because they have been brow-beaten by some form of
religion. The answer from these spiritual abusers has been,

“No you are not good enough and you are going to hell unless you believe X, Y, and Z and do A, B, and C.”

I
keep thinking to myself that that cannot be the main narrative out
there. I keep naively optimistic that people are not that religiously
abusive. But, then I run into reality. That spiritual abuse and its
effects are rampant.

The abuse is based on something that no one can possibly know.

How
can anyone know anything about God or about what happens (if anything)
when we die? The most anyone can do is make guesses. Your guess is as
good as any preacher’s.

Let the mystery be.

I think that the author of John’s
gospel was in his own quirky way trying to get that message across. He
creates this character, Jesus, as the Word with God from the beginning
of time to come down to Earth and to give the answers.

The
first miracle that the Creator the Universe performs when he comes down
to Earth in human form is turn water into wine. He is the life of the
wedding party. That should say something about how John wants us to approach the mystery of life.

He has Jesus say, in effect:

“I have been there. I have been everywhere. I and the Father are One. Chuck Norris runs away from me.”

The answer to life’s perplexing questions is,

“Trust.”

Trust.

If John’s Jesus is the personification of Reality, I hear Reality say:

Audio and text of my sermons are now on Southminster's web page. You can also get audio of sermons and podcasts of my radio programs at one place on my Soundcloud site. Podcasts of only my radio shows are on Podomatic. Thank you for listening and reading!